X server and xinit works excellent....almost.

[Polytropon]

On Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:06:37 +0100, Samuel Magnusson wrote:
> Is it then so that in the "new style" Xorg the XML-method will override 
> HAL, and this is the new default way of providing opitons that formerly 
> were in the InputDevice sections in xorg.conf?

I hope not! :-)

As far as I understood the _current_ mechanism, the precedence
is 1st xorg.conf, 2nd XML stuff, 3rd autodetect.

You have X without HAL and DBUS? Use xorg.conf because this
has worked for many years to centralize X configuration.

You have X with HAL and DBUS, but don't want to use it? Reflect
this choice in xorg.conf and continue with previous settings.

You have X with HAL and DBUS, but some things aren't detected
properly? Dive into the fun of XML and enter your settings in
the appropriate files, whichever they currently may be. :-)

There _are_ things that cannot be autodetected, and HAL needs
to be configured to "notice" a localization "deviation" from
the standard, which is en_US. That's what you are going to use
the XML stuff for.

In case you're _not_ using HAL with X, you have to make the
settings in xorg.conf, like this:

	Section "InputDevice"
	    Identifier  "Keyboard0"
	    Driver      "kbd"
	    Option      "XkbModel"     "pc105"
	    Option      "XkbLayout"    "de"
	    Option      "XkbOptions"   "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
	EndSection

Note that putting the "Zap key" into this file seems to be
more comfortable than putting it into some obscure XML files
scattered across the file system.

And completely independent from all those options, you still
can _always_ use

	[ -f ~/.xmodmaprc ] && xmodmap ~/.xmodmaprc

in your X initialization file (usually ~/.xinitrc).


This does _not_ say anything about what might become current
when HAL is fully out of support (as it is already considered
deprecated in Linux).



> And should HAL have discovered my swedish keyboard automatically in the 
> first place, so there was something going wrong there?

Can you tell me _how_ anything in software is supposed to
know what characters are printed on the key caps of the
keyboard? I'm not sure keyboard vendors do code localization
variants into their USB identification numbers...

This makes me assume the following: It's not possible to
determine the localized layout of a keyboard.

Just imagine I pop the german keycaps from my IBM model M
keyboard and put a set of swedish caps on, would the system
notice that change? :-)


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...